302 Mr. Newport on the Natural History 
When an unimpregnated female Meloë is confined without her partner, and: 
is well-supplied with food, the ova are developed within her, and her body : 
becomes more than usually enlarged, owing to the maturation of other ova 
besides those which are ready for fecundation. If this is still withheld, she 
will not deposit her eggs, but soon evinces symptoms of great anxiety, and 
ceases to feed. If the pairing of the sexes is not then consummated, she 
traverses her prison in a state of great excitement, examining every side of it, 
and trying to effect her escape. After a few days she becomes more quiet, 
and excavates her burrow, and like some Lepidoptera, deposits her eggs 
unimpregnated; but her instinct is then affected, and she leaves the bur- 
row open, without covering the eggs with earth, after which she very soon 
dies. ! | | 
When a female has been fecundated at the proper period, she always depo- 
sits two, and sometimes even three or four separate layings of eggs, at inter- 
vals of from one to two or three weeks. The first laying of eggs is always 
the most abundant. The number of eggs then deposited is at least three or 
four thousand. . In order to ascertain the exact number produced by M. pro- 
scarabeeus at her first laying, I removed the ovaries from a specimen that had 
been impregnated, and having divided one of these into several portions 
beneath the microscope, I counted the number of eggs in each portion sepa- 
rately, and found that the total number in one ovary amounted to two thou- 
sand one hundred and nine perfectly-formed eggs, all ready for exclusion; so 
that the two ovaries contained the astonishing number of four thousand two 
hundred and eighteen eggs. Perhaps it may be well here to state, that the 
eggs of Meloé are developed each in a Separate ovisac, on the exterior of two 
uterus-like ovaries, or enlarged oviducts, into which they descend before they 
are impregnated. Nearly the whole of these are deposited at the first laying, 
their impregnation being effected from the orifice of the spermatheca, as they 
pass along the common oviduct near its outlet. When the matured egg has 
descended from its ovisac into the ovary, the mouth of the ovisac is again 
closed, and a new EE eH immediafely passes into the sac from the ovarial 
cel end ag Mi a a py iat 
germ takes its place at is th misce ye dotes NA mma 
ue € egg of the third laying, and so on with each. 
